“I can’t believe you convinced us to watch that movie. Again.” The complaint was only half-hearted, despite Lucy’s grumbling before, during, and now after the giant robot vs. giant lizard fiction. Honestly, they could have watched almost anything and she would have had a good time. Not because of the luxurious regeneratively grown cotton covered couch which simultaneously supported her back and head perfectly while also feeling like she was sitting on a cloud. Not because of the ultra-spec kitchen she always itched to cook in and the overstocked pantry and fridge full of not perfect, but all locally sourced, regeneratively farmed by family grower, fruits, vegetables, and for the others, pasture raised chicken. Not even because of the addictive yet fattening deserts from the best bakery in town, just below Aaron’s apartment.
Really it was that she was with family. Chosen family. Her mother hadn’t been in contact for years and she hadn’t been able to find her. Not that Lucy had tried that much. Her father had left before she was born and, according to her mother, good riddance to him. All she knew was that she was all kinds of mixed. Her mother was half Filipina and half Mexican. Her father, she didn’t know. She should probably get one of those genealogy tests to find out. He probably wasn’t just a white guy, but that was definitely at least a good portion of it. Her mother just wouldn’t tell and there was no other family. Maybe there was, she just never knew about them.
Her three best friends for the last ten years were with her instead. While none of them were perfect and they seemed an odd bunch together, they were family. Real family. That made even crappy storylines and too loud home theater sound systems all worthwhile.
“Hey, that’s one of my favorites!” Aaron protested. “Sure, yeah, fine, it’s like, devoid of plot and the acting is pretty bad, but come on, giant robots fighting giant lizards! The effects and the mech and lizard designs, the set design, that was the true art of that movie.” When the pillow hit his face, he couldn’t help but laugh, though he’d made some attempt to look affronted. Lucy laughed along with him. Aaron was pretty damned wealthy. Not quite any-time-he-pooped-in-public-it-was-news wealthy, but getting close. He’d worked hard to be anonymous in the news cycle. His business decisions were reliably good and the people who worked for him always had good feelings about their CEO, CFO, COO, regardless of the role he was playing for whichever was the current company or companies.
Part of that was his joy in passing it on. Competitors wouldn’t think of him in the same way though. Your family, your friends, your people, they were to be protected, lifted up. The competition was there to be consumed or, barring that, crushed. At worst, they were tolerated. It had made Aaron enough of a reputation in the semi-closed door world of business that getting partnership, merger, or even outright purchase agreements had become quicker and easier. Nobody wanted to bet against his track record. Then again, he hadn’t gone into any well established industries. Start-ups, new ideas, those were the realm of his not insubstantial successes.
Here, in his apartment, with his closest and only true friends, he could just be a normal guy. Not the boss. Not the big scary competitor. Not some rich tech company CEO to exploit or interview. Here he was a bit more like the Dad, taking care of everyone. Just like the Dad, he got to control the remote and pick the bad movies. Everyone else could just eat his food and drink his beer and at best complain about it ineffectually. Ha!
“The thing that always ruins it for me is that the girl isn’t even that hot. It’s like, just because it’s a giant mecha movie doesn’t mean we have a hardon for just some Japanese actress. Inclusion is great and all, but I kind of want a more universally hot chick for the romantic pairing.” The big, overly gym attending man rumbled in his baritone from next to Lucy. Though his arm was behind her, it was carefully well away from contacting the shorter woman’s hair or shoulders. If anyone had paid attention though, any time he mentioned romance, his arm had twitched a little. Out of all the women in his life, Lucy had been the only one he felt really safe with.
She was interested, sure. They’d dated on the sly a few times. More than a few times. In the end it was always the same though. The way he treated the cruel, manipulative whores that practically threw themselves at him was something she just ‘couldn’t overlook’. So they’d gone nowhere. If he was really honest with himself, he was maybe a bit cruel to the long line of high maintenance girlfriends he’d had, never for more than a few months each. His heart hardened a little at even the small admission though. Each and every single one of those women had been just as or more cruel to someone for not being ‘fit’ or ‘making enough money’ or ‘handsome’ or some other excuse. They’d deserved being treated as if they were hollow shells of a human being. That is what they were, in the end.
Still, Lucy’s disapproving look at his comment on the movie was like a needle in his chest, though he hid the reaction behind what he knew was a dazzling smile. Ah, there! Just the tiniest faltering of her glower. He knew he was good looking. Really good looking. He worked incredibly hard on it, ever since the fat kid he’d been had been so horribly treated by the ‘hot girls’ in school. John was a couple of years older than the others. Even though they’d all met in the same General Ed classes at the same school in the same year, he’d taken a couple of years off from high school to work. On himself, as well as at a job. His parents and sisters had been just as cruel to him as those girls at school. Moving out had been the fulfillment of not just a dream, but a necessity. Twelve years since he saw his parents. At least seven since he’d heard from any of his sisters. It felt like it wasn’t nearly enough to heal the wounds.
“I like giant robots. Giant lizards were pretty cool too. The best part was the cheesecake.”
“You ate half of it by yourself!” Lucy protested.
“Well, I bought it cause I wanted to eat it.” While the others shook their heads at him with various expressions of amusement and part disbelief, it was not totally atypical of Alan. Though if John could be believed, Alan needed to get to the gym for like a hundred hours a week and eat a plant based whole food diet for at least six days a week if he wanted to even live to see fifty. Or have a girlfriend. Ever. John’s obsession with health and fitness and perfect hair aside, Alan knew that it came from a place of caring. John really, truly cared about all of their health. He pushed them in a way that was annoying, but out of love.
Glancing over at John’s arm on the back of the couch behind Lucy, Alan felt that tiny twinge of jealousy. Whether or not the two had ever acted on it, Alan knew that they were interested in each other. Lucy was never going to reciprocate his once held crush. He also genuinely didn’t feel the crush for her anymore, not after ten years of friendship. Still, he wished that someone would be interested in him. Lucy was the only woman he’d ever known who cared about him since his parents died in a car accident. His brother had overdosed less than a year afterwards. Maybe that was something which bound the group together. Lucy was estranged from her parents. John too, though also from his sisters. Aaron didn’t really ever talk about it, but he also never seemed to contact any family either.
It was just them four. Family to each other. Why they even wanted someone like Alan, he could never fathom. The others had excelled in school. Aaron in business, John in HR studies. Lucy had gone on to be almost top of the class in law school. Alan had just barely squeaked through classes. He’d always worked the easiest jobs with the most mediocre pay. He’d written some Excel scripts, some macros, and a few scripts in various CAD programs to almost do his HVAC engineering work for him. His employer was always happy with his work, though never ecstatic. His bank account was always happy with his pay, though never ecstatic either.
Much as in his work and his school, Alan had just not been motivated to excel as a friend. Yes, he showed up. Yes, he bought the occasional diet breaking desserts. More than occasional. Yes, he helped people move or drove someone to and from the airport, etc. Mostly though he was just… there. He wasn’t an active participant. They always reached out to him. He didn’t ask for help and he knew that hurt them more than asking would annoy them. Alan also knew that they were the last thread of connection he had to this world and the only reason he could, generally, say he was actually happy. Barely.
Aaron shut off the massive 4K Ultra projection screen and the sound system and deposited the Blu-Ray back into the appropriate case. It had gotten late. More than a few beer bottles were around each of them. While nobody was even really tipsy, between the stretch of time, the meal, and the plentiful refills of water that Lucy had pushed on everyone, they were all feeling worn out. It didn’t really matter though. It was Saturday! Nobody was going anywhere in the morning and nobody had work until Monday. There was always a possibility Aaron would get a call from work or something, but the man had reached a career point where he had a lot of good, reliable people under him who handled most problems. He may only be thirty-three, but the guy had arranged his life almost as if he was easing into retirement.
“What time is it? Geeze, almost 1AM.” John groaned, followed by Aaron and Lucy. Alan laughed at the three health nuts and their obsession with ‘sleep hygiene’. Then again, he was the one with a gut who couldn’t run up the stairs to Aaron’s apartment without having to recover for a minute at the top.
“Nobody’s driving for at least another hour.” The finality of the statement by their host prevented any argument. Even if nobody felt that they were anywhere near the blood alcohol limit, they knew that Aaron wouldn’t have any discussion about it. “And since that would put us yet another hour into our morning, y’all should just crash here. Lucy can have the guest bedroom and you two hairy man creatures can take the recliner and the couch however you want. I’ve still got your spare toothbrushes and the shower is available.”
The three guests only made meager attempts at a protest. It was hardly a new arrangement. If anything, they stayed over this way almost as often as they didn’t, after their Saturday game days. The whole bedtime process only took just over an hour. Only Lucy ended up taking a shower before disappearing into the guest room and locking the door. Aaron made sure everyone had blankets and pillows before bidding them good night. John and Alan played rock paper scissors over the recliner. That recliner was like heaven on Earth and had been known to put even the fitness trio to sleep in the middle of the day, it was so comfortable. John won, so Alan grumbled to himself, at least until he laid down on the couch, which was probably more comfortable than his own bed at his apartment.
The apartment grew silent in almost no time after that.
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“…gotta pee.” Alan grumbled as he rolled off the cloud he’d been sleeping on. Went to roll off, really, except that something raised his hackles and woke him up really fast. He wasn’t sure what it was. His phone read just before 6AM. Ryan, the head baker and owner of the bakery downstairs, and probably his two main employees Maria and Illayanna, would be throwing the first batches of things into the ovens. It hadn’t been anywhere near enough sleep so far. Alan debated between hitting the bathroom and going back to bed, or couch as it were, or staying up and catching the first batch of hot cinnamon rolls when the bakery opened at 6:30.
Still, he couldn’t get over what it was that had triggered a primal sort of heightened awareness. Shit, was it like that article he’d read, where even if you couldn’t tell what it was, your subconscious could recognize patterns associated with a predator? No panthers in the apartment though.
Maybe it was an intruder. Heart thundering, Alan did his best not to make any noise, lest the hypothetical intruder hear and attack him, or anyone, upon realizing they’d been noticed. Only the rhythmic breathing from John on the recliner and the near silent woosh of the minisplit could be heard. Well, and the gentle sound of the ocean, created by the constant flow of traffic from the freeway a few blocks over.
That’s when he picked up some muffled shouts and screams from downstairs. No longer willing to just hide, Alan sprung up from the couch, tossing the impossibly soft blankets to one side and stumbling onto legs that were still waking up. Breathing hard and heart pounding, he started to shout to John and the others to wake up, when his entire body froze. Like, literally just stopped moving, as if someone had pressed pause on the simulation. Only he could still think. He couldn’t move his eyeballs, which were looking at a downward angle.
It is an odd experience, seeing and not being able to move your eyes. You become hyper aware of things most people never know about human vision. Primarily, human eyesight is only clear in a small circular zone directly where you are looking and increasingly out of focus as it goes to the peripheral. Normally you ‘scan’ what you are looking at and your brain patches it all together with assumptions based on experience into a believable facsimile of a ‘clear and crisp’ view. Now though, Alan gradually realized that the world around a small patch was out of focus.
In the total silence of the paused universe, Alan watched light rise slowly up through the polished, smooth but not slippery, sustainably grown and harvested bamboo flooring. He idly noted the intricate patterns of lines in the patch he could see. The light felt incredibly unnatural. It was almost like he wasn’t actually seeing it with his eyes. Yes, actually, while the floor he was stuck staring at was the only crisp thing in his vision, he could somehow ‘see’ a huge pattern of lines encompassing the entire apartment floor, even in parts that were inside or on the other side of walls.
The next thing he knew, he was falling several feet into icy cold water.
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The Child cackled in delight as her highly modified Ritual fully energized with the raw Essence of the loosely defined reality Mother called ‘The Nursery’. Here was where Mother birthed and deposited all of her Children until they’d grown enough to be fully attached to a young world. Or until they’d been eaten. Absorbing the Essence which slowly permeated this Realm was a slow process. Also it tasted like butt. Other Children though were delicious! Not that, uh, not that she killed them herself! No, the Child was far too clever for that (and lazy)! Wait, who said lazy?
The Child stared out, as much as a floating, sentient ball of highly structured energy which could ‘see’ in all directions all at once could even stare. Whatever omniscient (narrator) voice had… wait, did someone just say-
Three pulses from the activated Ritual consumed most of the energy, leaving just traces as it completed the predetermined special sweep. The Child had modified an unnecessarily complicated Hero Summoning Ritual to use only a tiny fraction of the total energy. Had it used the original version with all the ridiculous specific identity checks, special alignment, destination confirmation, biocompatibility and esoteric compatibility conversions and such, then it would have taken too much Essence. The Child would have even been forced to use its own internal stores, when it was getting so close to Ascending! Just swooping in and consuming a few other Children who were critically injured from fighting either each other or from the stray Horrors that would sometimes slip into this Realm would push it into Ascension.
Mother had already assigned it to a burgeoning Realm, one which was still fairly young, though with several established Gods, Mother among them, and varied ‘intelligent’ species. Once the Child ascended, it would take on a form based on one of the local species and then it would establish some Chosen, perhaps Summon some Heroes and recover them from the moment of their death in some mundane world, transplanting them to their infinite delight in a world of magic and explosions and near certain death! Oh the little insignificant things loved the near certain death!
This was why it had made the Ritual though. It had tasted something called ‘pastries’, from one of Mother’s oldest mundane worlds. Mana, the lowest form of Essence, was generated by insignificant Mortal life. Mundane worlds produced, for whatever reason, absurd amounts of Mortal life. They also inevitably either destroyed all of said Mortal life or took to spreading themselves across the infinite and lifeless Realms. Mundane Realms were also incredibly cheap to create, since they did not retain or require a supply of Mana in order for life to even function. Thus, there were usually at least one Mundane Realm for each one or several Mana Realms.
Mother’s ‘pastry’ Realm was a dedicated Mana source for the Mana Realm the Child would become a God of. It only then made sense that the Mana Realm would have these divine treats known as ‘pastries’. Except it didn’t. The Mana Realm had much smaller populations, the different species regularly decreasing each other’s numbers. Regular conflict prevented the development of luxury goods such as sugar and cake flour. They existed, yet, the execution was… well, the closest analog to ‘pastries’ on the Mana Realm were actually made substantially from the excretions of a certain caterpillar and were consumed by tiny things known as Fairies. There was already a God assigned to the Fairies, so the Child would not be able to enjoy those treats.
Not that it wouldn’t be able to obtain them, eventually, but unlike the Fairies, all the other species were physically orders of magnitude larger. One properly sweetened pastry would represent nearly a quarter of the annual production of the tiny confections. There just wasn’t enough of the caterpillars nor enough Fairy labor to produce adequate supply! Something HAD to be done, before it Ascended to Godhood!
Thus, the absolutely genius and totally foolproof modified Ritual. Cutting out the fluff and letting it absorb Essence over a period of several Realm days, the Ritual had reached a minimum threshold and activated. Exactly one ‘pastry chef’ and two ‘assistance bakers’ had been intended. Yes, yes, the restrictions on identity were removed. Technically, any living creature above and below a fairly loose size range would be Summoned, but by restricting the total radius and targeting the center location of the Ritual, it had circumvented the concerns.
That, combined with a quick peek through the Veil that separated Realms to confirm the correct three were in fact at ‘work’ just before the Ritual activated. The Child was delighted! It peeked through the Veil another time, risking alerting Mother to its shenanigans, but needing to confirm that the arrival had gone smoothly and that the three were not scattered across the Mana Realm in so many parts, nor combined into a living flesh amalgamation. There was also the manner of the Blessings which the Ritual granted them, boosting their baking prowess to levels unobtainable in the Mortal Realm!
It would not only have ‘pastries’, but they would be at a level which Mother could never ‘buy’ from some mere shop! They would be so delicious that even Mother would bow herself before the Child and beg for just half a bite! The Child laughed. Mentally, of course, for the Child lacked any actual means of audible sound production. Also, The Nursery lacked air. It was like a sort-of planet with an irregular surface and really, no life whatsoever, except the Children, the invading Horrors, and Mother, when she visited to feed them Essence.
The Ritual had not completely faded, a small amount of Essence still permeating it. Hmmm. Had some boundary condition not been properly set? Location and orientation… radius… arrival location and orientation… All of these had the correct three geometric dimensions based on the Realm centers. Yes, yes.
“There’s no vertical height boundary on the intake side.”
Oh, right! How had it not noticed! Well, no matter, it would just consume the Essence remaining within the-
The Ritual pulsed four times, flickered, then collapsed, spent. The Child’s hypothetical non-existent blood ran cold. Not because four more lifeforms had been Summoned. Not because there was insufficient Essence to actually deliver them to the Mana Realm and they were surely lost to the Veil somewhere. No, it was because… The Child did not speak. Yet it had heard a voice.
“My Child,” Mother crooned, wrapping a gentle tendril of dense, almost too bright Essence around the Child, “you have done a terrible thing to those Mortals. Some of those were Mother’s playmates. Mother is very disappointed in you.” The Child shivered. Shivering was something a ball of energy could absolutely do. It was a useless endeavor however, for the tentacle of Essence held it more solidly than reality was even held together in this Realm. Even had the Child been Ascendant, the grasp which held it would not have budged even the most infinitesimally, should the Child struggle. Such was Mother.
When a spike grew from the tendril and pierced every protective shell the Child had crafted over a century of existence in the Nursery, it could only weep inside its mind. Mother did not take kindly to Children who meddled with the Realms without permission and especially without following Mother’s rules. Essence leaked out at an alarming rate as the Child deflated. Other Children began to gather a ‘safe’ distance away, sucking in the precious energy as they could. This Child would be consumed in the end, the failing and denser energy structures which had given it a ‘body’ converted to be another step forward for one of its surviving siblings.
Mother released it and was gone, slipped back through the Veil. The Child bled. Within Realm minutes it would be devoid of Essence, gone from the semblance of life that it had held. Sooner, likely, as its siblings began to fight for the chance to feed upon it directly. Only the intense and mindless hunger of the youngest offered even this short reprieve from death. It was in that moment of grief and resignation of its fate that the Child looked at the not quite totally depowered Ritual. The Essence which had been part of the basic spell structure had not broken down.
Its mind rushed and it went to work. The Child was, it felt, a genius at these sorts of things. Mother had often praised it, feeding it extra Essence, as it demonstrated its ingenuity. That ingenuity had cost it its chance at Ascension.
For now.
The Ritual was once again modified. There, the location was now in this Realm, this spot. The radius reduced. Vertical limits added. The Child was geometrically very small after-all and it did not want to pull anything else through with it. It would need a new physical form, fit for the Child of a God. The Blessing was modified to provide that. The sheer Essence cost of this was massive. It would take… everything. Everything the Child could provide. There was not even a second to spare to gather even the tiniest bit of Essence from the environment. At least it would be far beyond Mortal power, even if would no longer be able to Ascend.
Stripping all of its protective layers and ripping out the stored Essence inside it, feeding it all directly to the Ritual, the Child allowed just that critical part of it, its ‘mind’, to be Summoned. The structure blazed once more, not as brightly as it had originally, but much brighter than after the first three pulses. Without anything left to perceive with, the Child could not see the tiny opening in the Veil, the miniscule thread of dense Essence, nor the modifications to the Ritual wrought in an instant, which would have taken even the Child almost a minute to do. The thread retracted, the Veil closed, the Ritual faded, completely this time, not even the structured lines remaining. The fighting young Children would not notice for hours as they mindlessly feasted upon those of their number which were critically wounded during their struggle.